THERE were puddles forming on the Ailsa Course at a drookit Turnberry yesterday but don’t panic. As it’s Donald Trump’s Turnberry, those watery accumulations were, by far, the best puddles in the world.

It was raining on the parade ahead of this week’s Ricoh Women’s British Open but every sodden cloud has a silver lining. Stacy Lewis’s mood the other night must have been as dark and gloomy as a dank crevice on Ailsa Craig as she muttered, mumbled and cursed about airlines and missing golf clubs.

Yesterday, the 2013 British Open champion sported the sunny disposition of someone who had been reunited with the tools of her trade. To say it was a prolonged palaver of twists and turns would be putting it mildly.

“The clubs got lost on Monday and British Airways kept telling me to call back in 24 hours,” said Lewis, as she started to explain the kind of elaborate tale of reunion that Cilla Black used to specialise in during an episode of Surprise Surprise.

“There was a caddie next to me, Mick Seaborn, and his friend from school is the head of the Heathrow Terminal 5 baggage area. So Mick’s friend went out on the runway where there were probably thousands of bags piled up, found my clubs and took them to the last flight up to Glasgow.

"The clubs made the flight but they said they couldn’t be delivered to Turnberry until Tuesday morning, which was no use to me as I needed to practise. So my caddie and I drove up to Glasgow at night but we got a flat tyre on the way. After all that, we got there and here were the clubs and that was just the best news.

"But the story, you just couldn’t make it up. We got lucky. They said it could’ve been two days before they even moved some of those bags [at Heathrow].”

When you’re the world No.3 trying to prepare for an assault on a major championship, the last thing you want to be doing is boogling about in the dark with spare tyres on the M8.

Since winning the British Open at St Andrews two year ago, Lewis’s worst finish in any of the women’s majors has been a tie for 16th. The 30-year-old has had four top-three finishes in that time, including a second and a third this year. Indeed, since her last LPGA Tour victory in June 2014, Lewis has racked up eight top-three finishes on the circuit. She’s due a win, all right.

“It’s definitely frustrating that I haven’t won this year but I think it’s coming,” said the two-time major-winner, who was part of the US Curtis Cup-winning side at St Andrews in 2008.

Mo Martin, meanwhile, hadn’t won on the LPGA Tour until she made an astonishing breakthrough in the Ricoh Women’s British Open a year ago at Royal Birkdale. Her 3-wood approach to the 72nd hole, which rattled the flag and led to a title-winning eagle and a one stroke victory, was the stuff of fairytales.

Ironically, a shot with the same 3-wood just a week after that major conquest would lead to agonising pain, uncertainty and the juddering realisation that her career could be in jeopardy just as she had scaled the giddy heights.

“I felt a searing pain through my thumb and it took three doctors before I got a proper diagnosis,” the 32-year-old explained to a wincing gaggle of golf writers. “It was called a dorsal impingement. The joint capsule got so inflamed that it collapsed and my bone was pinching all these nerves. For four or five months I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to swing pain free again.

"To have made the peak of the mountain by winning the Open and then run it to that was tough. I tried not to think about [giving up] but if I was still in that amount of pain I wouldn’t be able to do it. I was pretty devastated at the time.”

Having been given a thorough tour of the inner workings of Martin’s bound-up and splinted thumb, the scribblers made the seamless transition into the complex world of bursitis in the hip and bone spurs in the ankle.

It’s not all birdies and bogeys you know. Michelle Wie has been hirpling about with both those aforementioned ailments of late and the protective boot she wore as she clumped into the media centre illustrated the aches and pains that come with battering away at a little dimpled ball.

Despite the niggles, the 25-year-old hobbled to an 11th place finish in the US Women’s Open three weeks ago and is confident a period of rest since then has got those strained cranks and pulleys back in reasonable working order again.

“I’ve just been shaking off the rust since I got over here and it’s been feeling good,” said the 2014 US Women’s Open champion, who finished third in the British Open as a teenage amateur a decade ago. “You can sometimes take golf for granted and my recent injuries have made me grateful about what I do.”

Despite the lashing morning rain and general dourness, Wie was in her element on the great Turnberry links as she absorbed all that surrounded her. Ailsa Craig? “Oh yeah, that big rock thingy out there,” she said with a smile.